“Hero”

 

c. 2025 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(7-25)

 

Another hero gone

Falling like wood being lazily culled in the forest

Too rapidly to comprehend as a bystander

Breaking branches sweep through the mist

As I struggle to get the gist

Of what was I thinking about before that clanging of the bell

My concentration lost

Pondering the cultural cost

Darts fired in a random sequence

It makes no sense

As a child, I pondered events such as these

When a petrichor of death lingered on the breeze

Grandma McCray

The uncle of a distant friend connected through school

A newspaper headline, bold yet trite

With a photograph in black & white

Falling, falling

The yonder days are calling

Each report of woe tags a piece of personal acreage, gone

Surrendered by chance

In a graveyard dance

With silence in the aftermath

Dreadful, and clinging

Like moss on a stone

Suffocating the living

Another weight in the knapsack

Heavy on my shoulders

Riding over swollen joints

Like a bag of boulders

Say their names, say their names

Rhythmically, tunefully

Competing in a genetic game

Until all pieces have left the board

And only a timekeeper with his tablet

Is left to calculate the score

Empty, empty

My heart hums a lonely verse

How many more have left the earth?

Empty is this room

Empty corridors stretch out in every direction

Familiar faces

Gone to the creator’s protection

Falling, falling, falling

The golden gates have tarnished over time

There’s a bitter edge on this glass of sacramental wine

The curtains come down

As an orchestra plays a farewell hymn

Darkness fills the theater to its walls and ceiling

A development

That has me reeling

A tribute to trains that run on time

Not by a schedule set from mankind

But instead, a celestial clock

Beating Folk, Jazz, and Hard Rock

And a glimmer of a 1920’s movie queen

The ether parts with an invitation

To bring in new recruits

To winnow out the unlucky

From those still waddling in their birthday suits

Empty in mind and belly

Unfed and unsatisfied

Taken for granted, perhaps

A point crossed off the Sohio road maps

Yet still clear in mind

“I knew it once was there!”

That township full of drought and despair

It was where I lived with the images, fair

Colorful and bountiful

These were my keepers

My defenders

My heroes